You can already optimize and protect your website with Cloudflare, and now you can use the service to defend your domain name against attackers—or crafty, wannabe cyber squatters—too. The security company yesterday unveiled a registration service that it claims will prevent domain names hijacks.

With CloudFlare Registrar, the company will automatically renew a client's domain within a year of its expiration, according to a news release. It will also protect against rogue attacks that can be difficult to detect and damage a company's reputation.

"CloudFlare Registrar isn't for the masses, it's for organizations that would make a front-page story if they lost their domains," CEO Matthew Prince said in a statement.

The company protects the websites of many high-profile organizations, including Reddit, Nasdaq, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it says. As a result, CloudFlare itself has been the target of multiple DDoS attacks. In 2013, the service went offline for an hour, taking 785,000 websites with it. Another attack in February 2014 was the largest ever recorded, clocking in at over 400Gbps.

Domain name registration tasks are often given low priority, even among high-traffic websites. Consumer-focused registrars like GoDaddy.com protect access to registrants' accounts with little more than a username and password. CloudFlare's registration service will set up an approval process where any changes to a domain must go through several steps before they are implemented.

DNS security came to the forefront of the 2016 U.S. presidential election after reports that the JebBush.com domain redirected to the campaign website for rival Donald Trump. But in that case, the Bush campaign appears to have simply neglected to register the domain name in the first place, rather than let its registration lapse.

About the Author

As a hardware analyst, Tom tests and reviews laptops, peripherals, and much more at PC Labs in New York City. He previously covered the consumer tech beat as a news reporter for PCMag in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where he rode in several self-driving cars and witnessed the rise and fall of many startups. Before that, he worked for PCMag's s... See Full Bio

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